Dear Sarah,
Thankyou for the proof of the jacket – it’s much more like the idea I had of it, & I want to thank you for the efforts you and Richard made on my behalf. I don’t know why the jacket seems to matter so much, but it does.
Incidentally the London Review of Books say that if I’m going to produce anything, could they have it in very good time as (possibly because it only comes out once a fortnight) they’re always way behind with their reviews –
best wishes, Penelope
[postcard to Sarah]
23 January [1982]
I’m sitting in a cubicle at the Bristol Hospital for sick babies,* among plastic mobiles and blue elephants – thankyou so much for sending the copy of At F. – I thought in the end it looked right – if any more arrive, then please could they go to 76 Carlton** Hill? best wishes, Penelope
Theale Post Office Stores
Theale, nr. Wedmore
Somerset
13 April [1982]
Dear Richard,
Thankyou so much for your sympathetic letter, I admit I was upset by Paul B.† in the Standard as there seemed to be so much personal dislike in it, and also an unpleasant suggestion of copying, out of some biography or other of Lilian Baylis (which I’ve never read), whereas all the characters are taken straight from life, whether successfully or not. However, I’ve been reading my Uncle Wilfred’s marvellous addresses to the theologians of the Order of the Good Shepherd, on 1. forgiving hostile reviewers and 2. not feeling morally superior because you’ve forgiven them. – But I do feel rather daunted and wonder if it’s a good idea to go on, if the going is to be quite so hard. I did think that (largely owing to efforts made by Collins) I was getting on a bit with At Freddie’s, as it seemed a good thing to be in Cosmopolitan, but well, I don’t know. – At Christmas time when Scribner’s asked for another crime story you advised against it and I’m sure it was good advice, but, as I say, I don’t feel now that I know what to do. – And worst of all I can’t decide whether ‘the danger of frost is past’ as the seed packets express it so poetically, and whether I can plant out my marrows or not.
I did like the Japanese ed. of Offshore very much, though. I liked being in the Have a Nice Read series –
best wishes
Penelope
[postcard to Sarah]
18 April [1982]
Thankyou so much for encouraging words, v. necessary to faint-hearted writers.
I’d be very grateful if you could send the Financial Times review if it should come to hand – (needless to say I don’t take the FT) Penelope
Theale P. Office Stores
nr. Wedmore
Somerset
23 April 1982
Dear Richard, Thankyou so much for kind thought, I mean about extracting £££ from the Arts Council – but as you say I’m not allowed to apply for anything (not that I ever have) for the 2 years while I’m on the so-called Literature Panel. What I’m entrusted with however is the other end of the business, reading typescripts and ‘classics’ wh: the publishers (called ‘clients’ at the Arts Council, as at a solicitor or fortune-teller) send in large quantities in the hope of subsidies. It’s rather interesting to see their breakdown of costs.
I do wish you the very best of luck with your applications – perhaps ‘luck’ is not the right word, but I’m sure you understand me,
best wishes
Penelope
I never seem to have the time to write anything except bits and pieces, and must now go and negotiate to borrow a goat, to eat down the nettles on the verge of the road. There are several goats in Theale, and one goat-cheese maker – P
[postcard]
17 June [1982]
Thankyou so much for the lunch, it was lovely to see you on Wed: – meanwhile I’m afraid you won’t think too highly of my researches into your father’s lectures and sermon – I take it that if it’s for the Newman Conversion (perversion, my grandfather insisted) centenary it must have been 1945, but he doesn’t seem to have been doing anything then, except revising the 3rd ed. of his Dictionary of Church History.
And the centenary lectures themselves all seem to be published by Burnes Oates, which won’t do. – So you see I am a failure – but perhaps I’ve got the details wrong –
best wishes P.
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
13 July [c.1982]
Dear Richard – I’m just sending you this Charlotte Mew (remember?) piece, which was well-received by the editor, and rather wildly, but loyally, cut down by my sub-editor, however, this is one more (the 7th) attempt by me to get you to think about a biography of CM. – I had a nice letter from Carmen C. about the article, but DON’T tell me to go to Virago, as they are so close about the £££.
Perhaps you’re on holiday, in which case forgive me.
Sybille Bedford a tower of strength at the PEN picnic. But she said she couldn’t give her approval to the vino garibaldino – however, I enjoyed the party and Oliver spoke so well, and there was a feeling of success about the whole thing, I thought.
I do so hope everything is going as you want (Jasper R. says he’s reviewed it for the TLS, but hasn’t had the proofs yet). – best wishes Penelope
P.S. (quite irrelevant) I was talking to Raleigh’s Raoul at a dinner-party last night and it seems he, too, once got into Buckingham Palace, as he was a friend of the flunkey in charge of the silver, who smuggled him in for a week to help during a busy period when ‘some monarch’ was staying. Perhaps people are walking in and out the whole time?
The Post Office Stores
Theale, nr. Wedmore
Somerset
16 July [1982]
My dear Richard, Thankyou so much for your kind letter – just at the moment I’m down here for a while as term is over, trying to repair some of the flood and storm damage (though we can’t alas put back the one apple on our 1st-year Bramley) so that it seems to me I’m further from Ashley W. Ho.* than when I’m in London, the S. of England being so extensive, otherwise I should have loved to come, and indeed we should love you to come here and see the shop, though, actually, it’s the kind of stone-built cottage with low doors where tall people hit their heads, and are felled, but it’s a nice sleepy place all the same. – Meanwhile (I mean during the strike) the coaches make an interesting study, they sell unlimited tickets and you can get them pretty well anywhere (at the Army and Navy for instance) and they promise to get you there somehow, but they brought out or rented everything that can crawl on 3 or 4 wheels, there are coaches starting out from Victoria called the Buffalo and the Llanberis Flyer, and some of them look as if they hadn’t been in action for years but they get them all away somehow. The police have much reduced the confusion by making everyone come in through the main exit, and out through the entrance. It’s amazing what a calming effect this has on the maddened tourists.
I really started to write this letter to thank you for reading through my g. grandfather’s life – I’m sure you’re one of the few people who could have done it and I perhaps shouldn’t have asked you – I’m sure you’re right and that apart from perhaps the end which is a classic I think it’s not reproducible – worse still I’ve just sent you another letter about Charlotte Mew – I can’t help it, it keeps coming over me as they say, I still feel her life is interesting in its way – and she did write at least one good poem, how many of us can say that? –
best wishes Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
13 September 1982
Dear Richard,
I’m sorry to worry you (I really do mean this) but I don’t quite know who to ask now about these small matters 1. is that I wonder if anyone can tell me the ISBN for the large-print ed. of Offshore (this is for the Public Lending Right of course which I daresay is driving you crazy as well) – I did have some copies but gave them to the Red Cross 2. I never had a copy, a copy for myself, I mean, of the Charlotte Mew contract so I wonder if this book has got swept under the carpet?
best wishes
Penelope
P.S. Jasper R. does understand the PLR* and is bringing out his next book on June 29th to save the cost of re-registering.
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
25 May 1983
Dear Richard,
You remember Charlotte Mew? Well, I’m going to ask whether you can help me about one of the illustrations. It’s the frontispiece to the Duckworth collected edition of her poetry (out of print) and it shows Charlotte Mew and her nurse, but the BL won’t reproduce it for me, because the permission I’ve got from Duckworths consists of the scrawled words ‘Yes, do. All the best, Colin.’ This is a permission, however, and I really can’t ask Colin to write another tidier letter, so could Collins reproduce this photograph for me do you think? It would mean getting a copy of the book from the London Library, though, and I’m afraid I’m not a member. More difficulties all the time.
Hoping to hear your PEN address on Pepys but I believe there’s no room – which is a good thing in itself –
best wishes
Penelope
I had to address the PEN conference in Venice on L. P. Hartley and I found I couldn’t remember anything about him, and now I’m struggling with an introduction to L. H. Myers’ The Near and the Far, and find I can’t remember anything about him. And altogether I think as you grow older you understand more, but remember less.
Theale Post Office Stores
nr. Wedmore
Somerset
8 October 1983
My dear Richard,
Thankyou so much for your letter, I was most disappointed to miss you, but am lying here like a bit of craft patchwork, however it’s promised that the stitches will come out next Monday. I didn’t know it was possible to hit yourself in quite so many places. The hospital did not believe in the ladder, and clearly think we’re a gypsy family who’ve been having a ‘disagreement’. (The next case brought in after me was an O/D-M/D – overdose, marital disagreement.)
In respect to C Mew, I still have the notes to do, though they’re not all that many, I don’t like nos. in the text for a book of this sort but prefer the notes the way they’re done in Quentin Bell’s Virginia Woolf biography – and I also of course have the introduction, acknowledgements, bibliography (not serious) to do. There are quite a few errors in the text, I’m afraid, (apart from putting ‘Boswell’ instead of Pepys wh: seems a Freudian slip of some kind) but it wouldn’t take me at all long to put them right, if only I can stop falling off things. (Apart from everything else I’m missing all my Arts Council committees and I can feel as I lie here that they’re deciding everything the way I don’t want. It’s very hard when you think of all the work I did for that committee.)
To return: Marjorie Dawson Scott has to be handled very very carefully, for many years she has refused to show her CMew letters to the biographers, American and otherwise, who asked her about them, and Marjorie can be very discouraging when she tries. She wouldn’t show them, for instance, to Val Warner who was editing the Collected Works, and she wouldn’t show them to me, but then one afternoon she suddenly handed me the correspondence in a paper bag. Even then she kept changing her mind and saying she wanted to write it all up herself, so I consulted the kindly (though shady?) Brian Elstob who said ‘photostat them all, my dear, and I’ll keep Marjorie in play’ – I didn’t like to do that, but I certainly copied a number of passages. Subsequently I was shown her ma’s diaries but she didn’t let me hold them so I had to read as much as I could upside down which I’m fortunately quite used to, and memorise all she said without making a note, which I find much harder than when I was younger. Let’s hope she won’t suddenly object to everything again. Such are the sufferings of primary biographers, Richard. Meanwhile I’m still very worried about Mrs Luttrell. She won’t let anyone reproduce the Nat. Portrait Gallery photo of Harold Monro without her permission and apart from all that there is permission for all my quotations from the BL Add. Mss. Monro papers. I’d be deeply grateful if you could write to her again as she never answered your first letter and do you think it ought to be registered or do you think that will make her hostile? It’s no use my writing or ringing up as she has refused to answer me for years, since she still thinks she is collaborating with Patric Dickinson on a book to end all books. Patric says he’s just resigned to the way she is, and I daresay he doesn’t care too much whether anything ever comes of the collaboration or not. Please do help me, Richard, I’m frightened to go ahead just on the strength of one letter that never got answered.
Sydney Cockerell, as you well know, was an old shit who was charming when he wanted to be a fairy godmother or cultivate famous people, although I’m afraid I haven’t been as successful in indicating this as Robert Gittings was in his Hardy. (Incidentally, Cockerell’s executor, Wilfrid Blunt, was so ill when I went to see him that he just gave me verbal permission, but I’ve known him do this before.) In any case no-one is interested in Cockerell, the interesting things about CMew are that 1. she was a poet, otherwise I shouldn’t bother to write about her 2. she was a lesbian 3. she was unhappy 4. she has a curious lifespan as a writer, from the nineties to the 1920s. The two people who encouraged me were Michael Holroyd, who wrote one of the first biographical essays on Charlotte Mew, (I mean one of the first ones after the collected edition of 1953) and Carmen C.* who is a Mew fan and of course still hopes to sell out the Virago Collected Works. I suppose there aren’t such luxuries as proof copies now, otherwise these two are the people who should get one, I don’t think they need to be asked to do anything, they will understand well enough.
I fear none of the papers would be interested in an extract about a lesbian who didn’t make it, but I can’t manufacture evidence, unfortunately! (Poor Charlotte features in the Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse without any evidence at all.) The interest, to me, is that she’s a divided personality who had to produce so many versions of herself at the same time. Perhaps we all do.
This letter is getting rather long, but Richard please do get Collins to make this book look nice. They made the Proust letters look decent and the Forster letters (which admittedly are sold to the Observer) are also going to look nice, I’m told, and I want CMew to look nice. It’s not just the cover, it’s the whole shape and lay-out. You remember you promised to scatter the photographs, and I enclose 2 copies of Monro’s chapbook (which I implore you not to lose as they can’t be replaced) to show you the right printing, if you’d look at Gerard Meynell’s ad: in the back pages (vi) of August 1919 – and I do want printer’s flowers in between the sections which is right for the period. Chapbook May 1921 has these (though I really sent it as I thought you’d like the ‘fragment’ on p 24 – this is quite irrelevant) and the format ought to be this 9 by 7 – don’t say, it can’t be! I know Collins will print 1031 and a half copies or whatever the mystic commercial minimum is, and sell 237 and cast it into limbo so it might just as well look nice in the first place, to give it some sort of chance. Don’t tell me I don’t understand commercial publishing, after 18 months of looking into their horrible secrets, costs, alleged costs and advances, I do understand it, but hoped this might be my lucky break. I’m sending this to Ashley T. as I can’t make out what happens at 8 Grafton St and don’t want it to disappear for weeks on end, but perhaps injuries are making me morbid. Yes I think they definitely are, but I do mean what I said about the make-up.
Michael Schmidt of Carcanet said he wd: like to put an extract in PN Review but I am ignoring this completely as it has no circulation and doesn’t pay.
Please forgive me if there are any feverish expressions, love to Mary, best wishes for the garden, mayfly and Clarendon – Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
14 November 1983
Dear Richard – This is only to say how sorry I was to miss you at Collins last Wednesday, I did hope to talk to you for a moment, (not I must admit about anything in particular) but Angela said she thought you were in the post room, and I couldn’t find you there
and got lost (temporarily) in the basement. – I think it’s very strange that the jackets and the book design are done separately, even if the 2 ladies are in adjoining coops – surely that’s no way to get nice-looking books? I tried to explain to Erica what 1920s Poetry Bookshop design was like, but didn’t have much luck, as I could see she had no idea what I was talking about. I did show her some examples, but she looked at them with dismay, I thought, well, we shall see.
While I was recovering from my dispute with the ladder, and Michael Church was in Frankfurt, the rest of the Arts Council grants committee came close to ignoring the all-important principle which Michael Holroyd got the Arts Council to accept last year, that history and biography (not only literary biography) were literature, just as much as fiction and poetry – however, we were both back last week and have got things straight again, so all is going well, I think.
Just back from Somerset – the baby is thriving and all the broad beans have come up – but the hens keep getting out, nothing, it seems, will keep them in. Committees and hen-keeping are terrible time-wasters I think –
Hoping to see you one of these days, best wishes to you and Mary – Penelope
76 Clifton Hill, NW8
9 December 1983
Dear Richard – Please excuse this A4, I’m never in the same place as the things I want.
Thankyou very much for taking this trouble about the I. of W. photograph, it would be a great improvement to have one – I’m not sure when the illustrations are supposed to be in, and am having great trouble getting Sydney Cockerell out of the National Portrait Gallery, who are always very slow. I’ll never do a biography again! In any case, I’ve rather lost heart over Charlotte M. since I was told it’s got to come out in the ordinary format, the jacket of course having been designed for 9 by 6 and will look dreadful, and Vera I think was disappointed as she had taken a lot of trouble over the right type, &c but now we’re back to Baskerville and the usual depressing mediocrity – I know of course that the book will lose money for the great firm but I hoped for once they might let themselves lose a little more.
So I Have Thought of You Page 43
